@neil @GrapheneOS Is there anything you notice as missing? I only have a single functioning phone (pixel 9a) and I genuinely want to try it, but also don't want to hit a major block that I'm not anticipating.

Maybe I need to buy an old phone and try that first?

@neil @GrapheneOS
In 1998 I was on my third PalmOS device (Palm III), which had a 3rd-party serial cable to get online with a GSM handset. And IR HotSync with other Palm devices. But I mostly did serial HotSync with a desktop.

@neil @GrapheneOS I wish I could say I'd had that experience. I had two Pixels, and with both the battery lasted a year. Both had Graphene which I enjoyed. The next phone, a Fairphone 5 with Murena was also excellent, except the only part at isn't user serviceable (the main board) developed a fault. I bought it to try to escape the problems with battery life. Now I am miserably using an iPhone and swearing at it every other day!

@neil Out of interest, do you manage to do everything you need to without running Google Play Services?

@neil @GrapheneOS I believe that yoh have the best expertise

@jfparis Yes, this is a replacement for my Pixel 6.

@coldclimate Just less than £500!

@unchartedworlds @neil

Steve Cutts has some absolutely sublime illustrations and animations on the role of our smartphones in modern society.

https://www.stevecutts.com

@neil

Thats the same specs and advertisement as the last 5 years , and is not much diff from the windows mobile ,

Im not impressed with black slab advertisements , written by other black slabs , for NPC's , the specs just arent much any different nowadays.

@neil
...aaand the extra compute is being used on surveillance, ads powered by said surveillance, unwanted LLMs, automatic corruption of the images captured by that great camera (see images of wildfire-choked skies being "corrected" from yellow to grey, for example)...

Even with the death of Moore's Law, the general population would probably be seeing more benefit to the advancement of hardware if we weren't in a cyberpunk dystopia.

@neil Ahhh did you grab one in the sales then?

@neil "It can also make and receive calls." Well, nothing's perfect...

@neil actually, the single best feature of the iPad is that it *cannot* make or receive phone calls.

@neil can I buy one that *can’t* make and receive calls. That may be useful.

@neil what's this call thing you speak of?

@neil If only most of that compute wasn't locked out from under your hands and just used for ever more powerful spyware.

@neil If you buy the right black slab and have a go-getter attitude it can do all of that and have a lifetime measured in possibly decades!

Or at least, more than 3-4 years.

I fucking hate that Bootloaders being locked down is legal.

@neil yes, although that was also true of the old black slab....